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Vulva's morphia

Artist's Book
1997 (published)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Schneemann is a multidisciplinary artist and pioneer of performance and installation art, her work frequently concerning gender issues, sexuality and cultural taboos.

Vulva's Morphia tells the ironic and amusing story of the education of Vulva, an innocent, who initially "reads biology and understands she is an amalgam of proteins and oxytocin hormones which govern all her desires". Vulva's education progresses rapidly as she "deciphers Lacan and Baudrillard" along with other patriarchal discourses, encounters anti-female grafitti, tussles with the male art establishment and finally, ever the keen student, decodes feminist constructivist semiotics to discover that "even her erotic sensations are constructed by patriarchal projections, impositions and conditioning …"

The progress of Vulva's education is documented through means of a single line of uppercase text goose-stepping along the bottom of each page and illustrated with multifarious depictions of female genitalia, both literal and oblique, ranging from erotic primitive art to medical illustrations, and enclosed in a sumptuous binding of crushed rose velvet.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleVulva's morphia (published title)
Materials and techniques
Printed book with pasted-in photographic images, bound in red velour, in plexiglass slipcase
Brief description
Artist's book, 'Vulva's morphia', by Carolee Schneemann, Granary Books, New York, 1997
Physical description
Artist's book issued in plexiglass slipcase.

"Edition of 35 [signed copies] on Hahnemühle premium velour ... printed by Philip Gallo and bound by Jill Jevne ..." -Colophon.

Plates pasted in. Colour illustrations.

Boards bound in red velvet.

39 pages.
Dimensions
  • Height: 29cm
Summary
Schneemann is a multidisciplinary artist and pioneer of performance and installation art, her work frequently concerning gender issues, sexuality and cultural taboos.

Vulva's Morphia tells the ironic and amusing story of the education of Vulva, an innocent, who initially "reads biology and understands she is an amalgam of proteins and oxytocin hormones which govern all her desires". Vulva's education progresses rapidly as she "deciphers Lacan and Baudrillard" along with other patriarchal discourses, encounters anti-female grafitti, tussles with the male art establishment and finally, ever the keen student, decodes feminist constructivist semiotics to discover that "even her erotic sensations are constructed by patriarchal projections, impositions and conditioning …"

The progress of Vulva's education is documented through means of a single line of uppercase text goose-stepping along the bottom of each page and illustrated with multifarious depictions of female genitalia, both literal and oblique, ranging from erotic primitive art to medical illustrations, and enclosed in a sumptuous binding of crushed rose velvet.
Other number
X980005 - NAL Pressmark
Collection
Library number
38041998102552

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Record createdFebruary 13, 2014
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